The great Vancouver landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander has passed away at the age of 99. I hadn’t realized until now how ubiquitous her work was in my beloved city. It was Oberlander’s idea, for instance, to set up “log seating” on our city’s beaches (in 1963). I visit her simple yet sublime design literally every day, on English Bay.

According to the Vancouver Sun, Oberlander’s “legacy of design [also] includes such iconic contributions to Vancouver’s public spaces as … Robson Square (1983), the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch rooftop garden (1995) and the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre (2011). She also designed landscapes for the Vancouver General Hospital burn unit garden, UBC’s Museum of Anthropology and the C. K. Choi Building.”

“May her memory be a blessing,” Mayor Kennedy Stewart wrote in a statement.